Madeleine Coles
Staff Writer
When Lydia Wilkes accepted a job as an assistant professor at ISU last fall, many factors went into her decision. But in academic terms, Wilkes said she was excited with the roles that she would be able to fulfill at ISU. In January, Wilkes will be taking over the writing program.
“I’m pleased to come into a program where someone is needed who can bring energy,” Wilkes said.
One of Wilkes’ biggest focuses is bringing digital technology into the classroom.
Wilkes will also be teaching first year writing as well as an independent study on video games and says she hopes to set up an advanced composition course modeled after a video game.
“It’s like a choose your own adventure where you can figure out what you want to work on and choose your trajectory through the class,” Wilkes said.
In addition to game studies, Wilkes also has a heavy focus on veterans. She is on the veteran’s advisory board and helped organize events to facilitate conversation between civilians and veterans.
“In our country, there’s this sense that civilians who don’t know veterans are really curious about that war experience,” Wilkes said. “But we civilians don’t have very many mechanisms to deal with that. So one of the things I work on is how to bridge that gap.”
Another of Wilkes’ areas of interest is critical race studies.
“In my first year writing class I teach how we think about race and racism, and I’m always interested in the way that white kids, when they start reading things about race, feel like because they haven’t had an experience being discriminated against because of race they can’t talk about it. And one of the things I want to say is that you can talk about it,” Wilkes said.
The most rewarding and most difficult thing about Wilkes’ career is getting to teach people how to write.
“It’s hard; it’s challenging; it’s time consuming. But it’s also so rewarding that I’ll keep doing it because that’s my career,” Wilkes said.
In addition to just teaching students to write, one of Wilkes’ favorite things to do in class is reversing misconceptions students have been told about how to write, such as not using first person or starting a sentence with “and.”
“I want to teach kids that writing is like the Wild West. You can really do anything,” said Wilkes.
But if there is any one thing in particular that Wilkes hopes students learn from any class of hers, it is rhetorical flexibility.
Many of her teaching techniques focus on allowing students to write from certain positions to certain audiences using different genres and mediums.
Throughout Wilkes’ career, she said ISU has been different from any other school because of the students.
“I’ve been privileged to work with students from all levels, and I’ve just been really proud of the work that my students have put into these different classes,” Wilkes said.
In the future, Wilkes hopes to work on a book about the representation of veterans in media and video games in particular. She also has many ideas about incorporating gaming principles into her classes as well as adding some more creative assignments and different ways of thinking.
